The Tony Jones Blog at Patheos
I’d love to have you join me at this!
Join three days of lively conversation about the “emerging” future of Christianity and non-dualism, a foundational belief of emerging Christians throughout the world.
Featured Speakers
Richard Rohr
Suzanne Stabile
Tony Jones
Phyllis Tickle
Brian McLaren
via Emerging Christianity Texas :: New Ways of Thinking, Being, and Following Christ :: CAC Conferences.
I arrived in Nashville on Thursday evening, just in time to take in the closing movie of the Nashville Film Festival, Cyrus, with the incomparable Gareth Higgins. My tripartite review:
After the film, I crashed the festival closing party and enjoyed the buffet.
Yesterday I ran a JoPa Productions Social Media Bootcamp for Pastors and Ministry Leaders at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church. Good times. And last night, as is my Nashvillian tradition, I joined Jay Voorhees at the legendary Station Inn to hear some bluegrass. On stage was the equally legendary Roland White and a breathtakingly good back-up band. At one point, Jay (a guitar player) looked to me (also a guitar player) and made the motion of chopping off his fingers, which is how I often feel when watching pickers who are so accomplished.
And today I’m addressing a group from the Alliance of Baptists about the intersections between emergence and their fellowship and about the Didache.
Gareth schooled me on the joys of bohemian Nashville, and I think I’m slowly converting…
Over the past month, I’ve both requested help from the Pentecostal readers of this blog for assistance with my paper for the Society for Pentecostal Studies, and then posted that paper in several parts. All the while, I kept under wraps the controversy that surrounded my invitation to that group. I did so out of respect for my hosts.
However, Arlene Sánchez-Walsh has gone public with her feelings on the matter at Religion Dispatches. So now I’ll weigh in on the matter publicly.
But first, some background.
Tripp "Sancho Panza" Fuller and Philip "Don Quixote" Clayton, by Dave Huth
If there’s a Don Quixote of theology, it may be Philip Clayton, in that he attacks orthodoxies with an evangelical zeal rarely found in liberal and progressive ecclesial circles. Tripp Fuller, Clayton’s erstwhile doctoral student and cornhole zealot, shares the wry, earthy wit of Quixote’s sidekick, Sancho Panza. I first made this allusion in the preface to Transforming Christian Theology: For Church and Society, the book penned by Clayton and Fuller, and they proved true to these characterizations last week at Theology after Google.
My thanks to them for bringing together this event. In many ways, it felt like an early emergent event, in that the quality and curiosity of all participants — those in front, and those in the audience — was uncommonly high. And also, because of that quality, the participants walked away somewhat disappointed. That’s because this was a demanding group, and because events, by their nature are bound to disappoint. Someone’s constituency is always underrepresented; someone else’s ego not sufficiently stroked; and someone else is convinced they could have given a superior presentation (which surely they could have).
For these reasons, it’s a difficult task to produce an event — more difficult, I’ll say, than producing something more static, like an article or a book (or a blog post!). So, I write to publicly express my gratitude to Don and Sancho for sharpening their lances and throwing a great party last week. Bravo! (And thanks to Dave Huth for taking me up on the challenge of the above illustration!)
Theology after Google wrapped on Friday, and some peeps have taken the time to blog their thoughts. Here are the latest posts:
// Get the “theology after google” – Google Blog Search widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! Not seeing a widget? (More info)
I’m spending the first half of this week helping to run FirstThird, a theological dialogue on youth ministry with Kenda Dean and Andrew Root. Follow our conversation on Twitter:
#1st3rd
Phyllis Tickle’s book, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why, is about to release. I’m thrilled about the book, and I’m thrilled to be involved in an event to celebrate the book’s release. Emergent Village, Baker Books, and JoPa Productions (along with explorefaith.org and more sponsors TBA) are hosting The Great Emergence National Event. This promises to be a watershed event in the continuing emergence of Christ’s church. Here’s some info on it:
The Facebook Group for the Book
The Facebook Group for the Event
How You Can Get to the Event for Free
After a long summer, both blogging for the Church Basement Roadshow and then taking about a month off, today begins a new season of blogging for me. Soon, my blog will be moving to Beliefnet, but until then I plan to blog (almost) daily here.
Tomorrow really begins a new chapter for me. After two years of writing and about six months of promoting The New Christians, I am beginning to write my dissertation on September 2 (title: “The Relational Ecclesiology of the Emerging Church Movement in Practical Theological Perspective”). That will be my main vocational focus in the coming months, and my plan is to complete the first draft by April 1. The truth is, I haven’t spent much time thinking about the dissertation since passing my comprehensive exams and having my dissertation proposal approved in 2006. But I’ve recently received a grant from the Louisville Institute which will allow me time to work steadfastly on the dissertation over the coming months. My plan, God willing, is to work exclusively on the dissertation every weekday until noon. Although it’s going to take an extraordinary amount of self-discipline, I will not check email in the morning (or RSS feeds!).
Of course, I’ve got some other irons in the fire, too. I still work part-time for Emergent Village, and we (the board) is guiding EV into a new chapter in the next few months. Doug and I are JoPa Productions, and after producing the Roadshow this summer, we’ve turned our attention to The Great Emergence National Event in Memphis, December 5-6. (We hope to produce 2-4 events per year that will bring authors and readers closer together.) I’ve got a limited speaking schedule which will only have me on the road 1-2 times per month (and my elite status on Northwest Airlines is falling from Platinum (75K miles/year) to Silver (25K miles/year)).
Plus, there’s the volunteer work: police chaplain, baseball coach, Cub Scout den leader.
Well, now it’s time to go clean the garage so that we can actually park both cars in there. Happy Labor Day.
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